Page 38 of Secrets at the Little Music Shop

He jumped. As if he’d forgotten I was there, or hadn’t heard my reassurances. ‘Christ.’ I’d never heard anyone sound so regretful, so empty, so lost.

‘It’s okay.’ It seemed to be all I could say. I wanted him to echo it, to tell me that everything would be all right, too. That nothing had broken that couldn’t be fixed, that he didn’t think of me any differently now. That we could forget this had ever happened.

And then like the call of sanity from the living room, the phone began to ring. Ben opened his eyes and stared at me as though he’d never seen me before.

‘Christ.’

He was actually shaking.

‘The butter is burning.’ It was all I could think of. What do you say to a man who’s just kissed you like that? What do you say when the memories come back to haunt you and all you want to do is run?

‘Where are you going?’ His eyes were wide, his pupils huge, they seemed to swallow up his face until all I could see were those holes in his soul. ‘Jemima?’

‘It’s okay. I’m just going to answer the phone, it might be important.’ And I needed to get out of that room where the smell of burning butter was beginning to take on a brimstone tinge.

It was Jason. ‘You sound rough. What’s up?’

‘Nothing. Ben’s here cooking a meal.’

‘Yeah, right. Cookin’. I getcha. You want to get back in there and show ’im that trick with the ice cubes . . .’

‘Jason, why are you ringing?’ I had to interrupt otherwise Jason would be on the line all night giving me his favourite sex tips. And I so — so — did not want to think about sex right now.

‘Ah. Well, thing is, luv, I think I might have left the welding iron on down at the studio. Any chance you can pop over and turn it off? I mean, it’s not like the place’ll burn down or nothing but . . . you know, safe side an’ all.’

‘Can’t it wait until the morning?’ Or any other time when I don’t have a possibly suicidal guitarist in my kitchen?

‘How much do you care about your stuff in the workshop? On a scale of one to ten where one is Terry Wogan and ten is his gorgeousness out there?’

‘All right, I’ll go over now. Just to set your mind at rest.’

‘Thanks. Oh, and Jem—?’

‘What?’ There was a sound of saucepans clanking from the kitchen.

‘The ice-cube thing. Honest. Every time.’

‘Shut up, Jason.’ And I put the phone down.

Ben had scoured out the burned pan, remelted the butter and was stirring it with careful, close attention. His eyes, when they met mine, were slightly desperate. ‘Everything all right?’

‘Just Jason wanting me to run over to the workshop, check he hasn’t left the welding stuff switched on. Are you—?’

‘You’d better do it then. I’ll get the starters prepped while you’re gone. This is nearly done, so we’ll be ready to eat by the time you get back. Rosie will just have to have hers later.’

The heat was making his skin flush and his eyes were vast through the steam. I wanted to fall into them, I wanted to run. How could one person feel so much conflict? My mind was tearing itself apart. And now, thanks to Jason, all I could think about was the ice-cube trick and how Ben would have reacted to it. ‘I’ll be quick.’

‘Maybe sometime you could show me your workshop? It would be cool to find out how you actually make the buckles.’

Had I fallen into a parallel universe? One in which Ben and I hadn’t been on the verge of ripping one another’s clothes off but had instead spent a decorous evening discussing art and improving literature? ‘Yes. But not now, unless you want to burn the bottom out of another pan.’

He smiled, and it was only the touch of wildness at the edge of his expression which gave the lie to his words. ‘I’ll be fine here.’

The coolness of the night air spread like a lotion over my hot skin. Already the events of the evening were beginning to seem a distant memory, or a dream. Maybe I’d over-reacted, maybe his kiss had been simply an affectionate peck that went wrong. But my thighs jumped and twitched under the remembrance of his touch, the sureness of his fingers against the gap between my hold-up stockings and my knickers. No-one makes that kind of mistake — even if the kiss had been a figment of my imagination it would have taken a work of creative genius to explain away those hands.

Ben had wanted me. And I’d wanted him. And then with a flash of horror my mind opened and let the memories in. The huge emptiness where our parents had been. Randall, trying to keep us together, Christian falling apart. And Gray. Love that wasn’t love but fear turned on its head. And then the running, always the running . . .

I shook my head, letting the air circulate around the back of my neck. It was just one of those things, I had to keep telling myself. It didn’t mean anything. Ben was lonely, hurting, wanting reassurance and happened to be there. Meaningless. So why was my skin burning where he’d touched it?

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